


Used Sparingly

by RurouniHime



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Antagonism/Flirting, Arthur's Big Brain is the Problem, Bad Projection is Bad, Clothing Kink, Cock Tease, Dreamsharing, Drunken Shenanigans, Eames Don't Ever Change, Fantasizing, First Kiss, First Time, Français | French, M/M, Pining, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-04
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 15:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/869269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Not to belabor a point,” Eames crackles into the comm while Arthur’s busy setting up his scope, “but if the rest of the job is going to go like this, we’re all going to need a significantly greater number of escape routes.”</i> (or, Arthur’s subconscious is what we call ‘focused’.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Used Sparingly

**Author's Note:**

> **THIS IS NOT PART OF THE DAY SERIES. Again, the cheese stands alone.**
> 
>  
> 
> I wrote this in response to [my own prompt](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/20822.html?thread=51315798#t51315798) because I believe that if you want to read something specific and you can’t find much of it, write it yourself. ^_^
> 
> Here's to forcing Arthur into the comedic straight man role. Which is almost as fun as putting Snape there. 
> 
> Thank you ever so much to coffeejunkii for her usual gracious listening as I blabber away about Things, and thank you thank you THANK YOU to thebeantree for helping with my beginner’s French! Please see end notes for Other Info.

“I have found men who didn’t know how to kiss. I’ve always found time to teach them.” ~Mae West

 

...  
...  
...

 

The comm crackles. “Uh, yes, anyone there?”

Eames.

“Reading you,” Arthur says, touching the bud and turning his head, trying to get a better grip on the street’s bizarre layout.

“Yes, I’m... having a little trouble on my end.” A pause. “I think.”

“What kind of trouble?” Cobb asks through the comm.

“Well, it’s— _ow!”_

Arthur’s hand is wrapped around the gun in his coat pocket before he answers. “Eames? You alright?” He spins, looking back down the road.

“I’m fine. Just— No, hold on, _thank_ you,” he says to someone else, “if you could back up and give me a little— Yes, hello? Just a bit hemmed in at the moment.”

“Projections?” from Cobb, and Arthur frowns. He’s been attentive to his own mood, hasn’t gotten the sense of any danger from his end. None of the projections near him are changing direction, heading toward where the infiltration is. Just walking along, doing their thing.

“Well—yes, actually,” Eames says. “Only they’re behaving a bit—Oy, stop that, what the bloody hell? Hands off!”

There’s shuffling, another voice, and some cursing from Eames.

And Arthur has a horrible, _horrible_ thought.

“Encountering problems, terminating the dream.” He pulls his gun out the rest of the way and shoots himself.

Naturally, he’s the first one out of his chair, though Dom, as the dreamer, is already starting to blink awake. Arthur removes his cannula. By the time he starts winding it into the PASIV, Yusuf is there, checking pulses and pupils.

“You had six more minutes.” Yusuf sounds bewildered. “Did something happen?”

“Yes,” Eames says pointedly from his lawn chair, turning his head to the side. His hands are still folded across his stomach, but his eyebrows are high, high, high on his forehead, and Yusuf opens his mouth.

“Yusuf!” Arthur calls, louder than he expressly needs to. Yusuf looks up. They all look up.

“Yes?”

“Something bad in that Somnacin. Get it checked.”

Yusuf screws up his face and opens his mouth again, so Arthur leaves for lunch.

**

As quick fixes go, it’s not terribly effective.

Eames is laughing when Arthur gets back with a questionable Caesar salad. “No, no, they didn’t _hurt_ me. It’s more like...”

“Yeah?” Ariadne’s nose is all scrunched up, eyes somehow wide at the same time. She looks as perturbed as the squirrel Arthur nearly stepped on outside. They’re sitting across from each other, still in their lounge chairs, but they have sodas now, in hipster old fashioned glass bottles that Arthur would like to break on principle.

“Well, you know those films, the undead going after your brains, but in this case, all they actually want is your—” Eames gestures, hand cupping lewdly, and Ariadne gasps into a laugh. She flings her head back against the chair, grinning at Yusuf upside down. 

“That’s some mix, Yusuf,” she says, toasting him with her bottle. At his desk, Cobb glances up briefly. Eames kicks back, cocking one elbow behind his head, the picture-perfect center of attention. Arthur wants to hit him.

...and he’s going to blame his sudden propensity for violence on Yusuf, too.

But Yusuf just frowns, poking at his mixture with pH paper and a dropper. He glances Arthur’s way, a little slide of his eyes. Unfortunately Ariadne is still smiling at Yusuf when he does this, so she looks Arthur’s way, too, and suddenly Arthur’s being _stared_ at.

“What?”

Ariadne’s eyes widen and she sits up a little. “Uh... what? How was lunch?”

“Over.” He goes to his desk, grabs the folder containing Ariadne’s maze drafts, and stalks back, determined to smooth the ruffles out of that damned street layout if it kills them all.

Eames is watching him, too, still wearing that faint smile.

**

“Not to belabor a point,” Eames crackles into the comm while Arthur’s busy setting up his scope, “but if the rest of the job is going to go like this, we’re all going to need a significantly greater number of escape routes.”

“Escape routes?” Cobb asks.

“I can’t get a bloody thing done, they know all the damned forges.”

Cobb’s very silence sounds puzzled, Arthur can hear it. “Who?”

“The bloody projections!” Eames sounds hushed and slightly strained, like he’s crouched somewhere. “Even tried a few faces that aren’t on the docket, but they didn’t bat an eyelash.”

Arthur trains his scope on Cobb’s face to find their extractor squinting up in his direction from the tiny alleyway below. Meanwhile, Eames goes on.

“—just sort of smiled at me and shook their heads. I’m not getting out of this, what is this, a janitor’s closet? Yes, not anytime soon.”

Cobb looks around his very projection-less vicinity. “Anyone else having trouble with Arthur’s projections?”

Two “no’s” later and a “well, isn’t that _interesting,”_ as fluid as silk in his earpiece, Arthur hunkers down on the rooftop, aims, and takes Cobb out with one shot.

“Arthur!” Cobb lurches upright in his lounge chair, smacking the heels of his hands onto the seat. “We have a level to finalize, would you _stop?”_

Arthur removes his cannula with a shrug. “Closing in on both ends of the alley. Wasn’t going to be pretty.”

Ariadne is staring at him. Yusuf is staring at him. Eames is probably staring at him, but Arthur’s not about to feed that monster, thanks. Cobb opens his mouth, squints again, then shuts it. He gives a slow nod. “Thank you, then.”

“What I’m here for.” He gets up, thinking very intently about all the important bank statements he has to check for the third time—can’t ever be too careful in this line of work—when Eames murmurs just to his right, quietly enough to be missed by the others as they untangle themselves:

“Yes, darling, but what are _they_ here for, I wonder?”

He looks. He can’t stop himself. Eames is playing quite obviously with his chip where he reclines, practically fondling it with thumb and forefinger. The grin on his face is canted and divining, and a lot like a wolf’s.

Oh. _Fuck._

**

Arthur might be carrying a little bit of a torch for Eames.

 _Tiny_ torch. More like a match. That fell out of a book someone dropped in a puddle outside a Motel 6.

It’s been going on long enough that he’s chosen not to fight that battle. It’s hardly Arthur’s fault that Eames punches every button with a direct pipeline to his dick. He does it gloriously, and gorgeously, and outrageously, and a whole bunch of other things, and god, it’s irritating, but Arthur isn’t exactly in control of the way his brain has chosen to misfire, is he?

It won’t matter anyway, because Eames is a shifty, smooth-stepping picker of more than just pockets, something that is going to be made very clear again tomorrow when he inevitably tells everyone on their crew about Arthur’s current plight.

**

The next morning, Eames is in before him, dressed in a delightful shade of puce. His eyes fix to Arthur when he walks through the door and remain for three seconds longer than is comfortable, then move casually away. Eames pushes off the counter where he’s leaning and takes his tea to the desk he’s commandeered. 

“Rise and shine, darling?” He smells like cigarette smoke and aftershave.

Puce. “That color sounds like vomit.”

Eames doesn’t even blink. “And invokes the noble flea, isn’t that exquisite? J’étais en extase.”

“Je m’en fous,” Arthur responds, flat. 

Eames turns slowly to face him. “Mmm,” he rumbles lengthily in his throat, and lifts the mug to sniff at its contents like a wine connoisseur. 

Arthur starts the coffee machine. 

Ariadne comes in around 8:45 with a sack full of maple bars, bopping along to something squealy on her iPod. Dom comes in with his head in his Nook and a thinky pucker to his mouth. Yusuf comes in and goes straight to his vials. 

At nine o’clock, Eames avails himself of Ariadne’s donuts. 

At half past ten, Arthur supervises an update on everyone’s progress. At 11:03, Ariadne’s alarm starts beeping, interrupting her involved explanation of why the hell she decided to layer the city streets like a damned Necker cube, and she stops to feed her Farmville goats.

After lunch, people still aren’t enlightened. About Arthur or the Necker cube.

Eames has never been one to make Arthur wait before. If there were a limited supply of ways to piss Arthur off, then maybe. As it is, there’s a bottomless well of that crap, and it seems that Eames owns all the land rights.

Eames and Cobb go under for a half hour to fiddle around with a potential third level idea. No matter how the job goes down, Arthur won’t be on that, so there’s no need to give the recesses of his brain any excuse to be clever. He does some much needed legwork, over to the bank to con his way into a dummy account number they’ll give to their client, while Arthur siphons the real payment through a network he already has set up.

He ponders the idiocy of leaving headquarters at all halfway back from the bank. Eames might have been waiting for Arthur to get the hell off the premises. But no one’s tittering when he gets back, no one’s grinning behind their hands, no one’s staring at him. Except Eames. 

As far as Arthur’s concerned, nothing’s changed since the last job they worked together. But then, Arthur’s been around himself pretty much nonstop during that time, so it’s possible he’s just unaware.

It’s been ten months. Arthur’s spent it very profitably, and now has more money than Bill Gates. Mostly because Eames took a lot of money off of Bill Gates this past summer with the help of a duo of extractors, and wasn’t that a beautiful thing to watch? But. Arthur’s been busy, too, thinking about other things, like his nest egg and swindling a particularly arrogant tax inspector out of the money he thought he could steal from Arthur’s accounts, and _this…_

This is unacceptable.

Maybe he should blame Yusuf for the shift. Who knows what might have triggered his brain to shank him in the back? It could very well be something in the drugs.

Sadly, it’s neither here nor there. The cat’s definitely out of the bag, and yowling with glee.

**

Eames _tortures_ him. Three days go by. Dreams are dreamed. Dom has his usual epiphany. Levels are rewritten. Arthur observes it all with his guts slowly knotting into a cold, heavy lump.

Always, always, always with Eames, something happens in time to remind Arthur why he’s better off gazing through a scope, and not close enough to get blown backward by the con when it finally ticks down to zero.

**

They’ve reformulated the Necker cube. Thanks to Eames’ charm and Ariadne’s gullibility, the kick music is no longer by Panic at the Disco. Neither do the streets resemble a Giger alien’s intestines. Things are going well, Arthur’s projections seem quite content with their new world, and _things are going well,_ and.

Eames is apparently taking off his shirt. 

“Huh,” Dom says. Ariadne, the closest to Eames, rears back a little, then watches interestedly as inches of the forger’s chest come into view.

“Eames.” Yusuf glances around the dream, then taps his fingers on his leg and leans over. _“Eames._ What are you doing?”

Eames’ hands still, mid-chest. “It’s hot.” He says it like Yusuf has befuddled him. And then he undoes his cuffs and rolls up his sleeves, and mother of _god._

Arthur wants to cram his fingers into the crooks of Eames’ bare elbows and feel the coin-oval of scar tissue halfway up his left forearm, thumb the knotted ink winding along the inside of his right, thumb it hard and red and flustered, shove Ariadne out of the way and dig his teeth into the heel of Eames’ palm, and fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ one of the projections lunges out of a doorway, fingers clawed like talons. Ariadne leaps away from Eames’ side with a shriek, running down the street. The projection, a woman, takes off after her, howling like some godawful hellspawn. Arthur shoots her down a few yards later, and Ariadne leans over in the road, hands braced on her knees as she pants for breath.

Eames looks at Arthur, hums, and calmly undoes another button.

There aren’t words to describe the way in which Arthur is going to murder him.

**

“Carriage ride,” Ariadne sighs. “Through Central Park when all the lamps are lit, and it’s winter, so they have those blankets, and we’d share.”

“Marvelous, my love. I applaud your sense of the classics.”

Ariadne smiles like a cherub. Arthur can see it quite clearly from where he walks behind the pair of them. “Your turn.”

“Don’t know if this holds a candle to your delightful jaunt through the park, but... Ariadne, darling, I would take my date to One If By Land, Two If By Sea.” 

Ariadne gasps and claps her hands. Off to the left, one of Arthur’s projections is weeping quietly in the corner by a green dumpster. Arthur stares dully at it.

“Oh my god. Not to be an awkward turtle, Eames, but I would seriously offer to have your babies on the spot.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Eames says graciously, and gives her a little bow. Ariadne bows back and they both grin before Eames takes her hand into the crook of his elbow and continues their meander down the road. He pauses again until Ariadne switches up the end of the street and lowers a building two stories. “Unfortunately, I would have to decline. As much as I adore you, I’m afraid I couldn’t worship you in the manner you truly deserve.”

“Eh, the trials of having a vagina. What then?”

“Well. After the four course meal, during which we would share the choicest morsels, I should think a walk along the river. There’d be a violinist, because there’s always a violinist, and thus, there would be dancing.”

Holy fucking hell, _what._ “Get up,” Arthur hisses, too low for the others to hear. He sneaks a glance their way, then glowers at the projection again, fisting his hands. “We do not behave like this. Over _that bullshit.”_

“You’d kiss his hand, right? You’re totally a hand kisser.”

“As many times as he’d let me, Ariadne, where on earth is your head?”

Arthur’s dumpster projection keels over with a wail and starts rubbing its forehead on the ground. Across the street, another projection has begun to kick furiously at the pigeons. 

**

“No. It’s all the way across town.”

“Hm.”

“Dom. _No.”_

Dom frowns up at him from behind a wayward lock of hair. “Arthur, you can see how much work I have to do here.”

Arthur crosses his arms. “You’re the one who ordered from that place. You go pick it up.”

Dom sighs, long-suffering. Arthur grinds his teeth in return, and then a cheerful voice behind him chimes in. “Don’t worry, I’ll retrieve dinner.”

Arthur glowers at Eames. “You don’t even have a valid license to drive in this country.”

The smile he gets in return is beatific. “And that’s why I’m riding shotgun.”

Ariadne darts by, nipping the keys out of Arthur’s hand.

“Do _not_ mess with the radio stations,” Arthur warns, but it’s halfhearted. At least they’ll be gone and he can get something accomplished.

And he does. Until the noisy reunion wherein the door opens and the errant hunters return, laden with carryout… and Ariadne is midway through a sentence that makes Arthur’s jaw lock.

“—he really tell you to _‘get all up on him like white on rice?’”_

Shit. _Shit._ The Christchurch job.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ariadne,” Eames chides. “He ordered me.” 

In Arthur’s defense, he’d had to be genuinely drunk for the charade to work. And then he’d taken those ten months afterward to give them some necessary perspective, i.e., the fact that work is work, Eames isn’t the only one who can give an Oscar-winning performance, and Arthur excels at being professional. Except clearly none of that took.

Ariadne smirks. Her gaze darts in Arthur’s direction. “No way.” Eames just smiles and shrugs, and Ariadne’s eyes bug. “Wait, are you serious?”

“Would I lie to you?”

Her mouth pinches, and Eames waves his fingers, flicking the supposition aside. “Yes, alright, but have a little faith, love, because in this case—”

Arthur _sees_ the instant Eames changes direction. It’s so sharp, a razor’s snick, shocking that he even understands what he’s witnessing, and then—

“—I am once again pulling on your quaint little pigtails.” He sets the food down on Ariadne’s desk, smile wide, and Ariadne, Ariadne huffs and then actually checks her hair, parted in two loose braids over her shoulders.

“Man,” she groans. “I knew it. _Knew_ it.”

Arthur waits for Eames’ eyes to flick his way, watches and prepares. But they never do.

**

He needs a good fuck or this job is toast.

Arthur dresses in jeans he’ll need a potato peeler to get out of and a shirt the color of heart’s blood. He shaves his facial hair into a lazy scruff, lets his hair dry curly and misbegotten, and breaks out the kohl because tonight he has a timeline. He’s not in his twenties anymore. He needs a full eight hours of sleep, damn it.

He spritzes cologne and tucks his billfold into his back pocket, then opens his door to the hallway, where Eames is leaning on the jamb.

“Shit,” Arthur says.

“Well,” Eames says after a lengthy pause, during which his eyes fall and rise like Arthur’s body has become unaccountably sticky. “We _are_ focused tonight.”

“Going out, Eames.” He moves forward, and so does Eames, and no one gets anywhere but a whole lot closer than is necessary.

“Yes,” says Eames slowly, and doesn’t continue the thought. Arthur stands in his doorway, and Eames stands just outside it in gingham and tweed. It’s soul-destroying. Arthur wants to crawl right up his legs.

“Move,” he grates.

Eames moves. It is slightly sinuous, like a stretch, and not helpful. Now Arthur wants to hook his toes into Eames’ belt loops for purchase and erect a watchtower.

“I have a theory,” Eames says.

“Because that never happens.”

“Would you dislocate my spine if I expounded upon it for you?”

“Shouldn’t give me ideas, Eames.”

Eames’ thumb taps against the door jamb. “You’re like the Spanish Inquisition, Arthur. If I’ve managed to think it up, then there’s no doubt you’ve already come up with three variations.”

It’s true. It’s always so fucking true. Arthur hates how that also translates over into things that involve the exact opposite of killing Eames. God, his _mouth._ Arthur absolutely cannot start looking at it, for beyond there be dragons. “Move,” he says again, but Eames only steps more into his way, over the threshold and inside.

“Cheers, don’t mind if I do.” He palms the edge of the door and swings it closed behind him, as fluid as you please, and Arthur is left slack-jawed in the middle of the tiny excuse for a hall when Eames leans back against the door’s surface, shutting it with a click.

“Inquiry.” Eames sounds like he’s feeling his way around the word with his tongue. “Just one, and then I promise I’ll go.” Arthur exhales hard and Eames straightens a bit, eyes flicking down toward Arthur’s hand. Which might be twitching. “Ah. Darling, you wouldn’t happen to be armed, would you?”

And where on earth does Eames think he would he put it? Arthur narrows his eyes. “Why? You enjoy living dangerously.”

“It would seem so.”

“If that was your question—”

“No, no.” Eames taps the door again, this time a steady drum of his fingers. “I have a real one. Provided, of course, that I get a real answer?”

Arthur snorts. If Eames thinks he’s promising that— “Ten seconds.”

“Yes, alright—”

“Nine. Eight.”

“What exactly would your projections do, I wonder, were they to get what they want?” Eames’ stare is incisive, full of coiled motion. “Hypothetically.”

That word is such a perfect metaphor that the air between them glisters with it. Arthur’s known men like Eames. He’s told himself he’s not falling for this one, but falling is not the problem, and Arthur is not one to ignore a boundary that has already been crossed. But he doesn’t need to slide into its bed this time and bounce feelings he doesn’t talk about off a mere reflecting surface. Hypothetical indeed.

“If you had _any_ cognizance of what my projections want,” he says, and lets it go at that. He fishes his keys out of the pocket of the coat hanging over the bathroom door, knowing that if he walks now, Eames will just follow him to whichever club he ends up at. He’d like to see Eames keep up with his car.

“You seem a bit vexed with me tonight.” But Eames is grinning, crooked teeth playing with his lower lip. The urge Arthur’s feeling is definitely to grab a pair of pliers and go to town.

“There is no time of any day or night that I am not vexed with you, Mr. Eames.” At least that’s the god’s honest truth. 

Eames makes a low sound. “And what I wouldn’t give to be around day or night to properly take credit, Arthur, where _did_ you find those jeans?” He rubs his mouth with his knuckles, then pushes off the wall and comes closer. Arthur gives up, throws his hands in the air, and goes back into the main room. Eames, naturally, follows him.

“What?” he snaps. “What do you want? Bullet points, Eames, time’s up.”

“Your version of foreplay is decidedly intimidating, darling.”

“My _version_ of _foreplay?”_ Eames hasn’t met Arthur’s ‘version of foreplay.’ And that’s not what Arthur needs to be thinking about right now.

“You have a very kissable mouth, Arthur.”

It’s never been described that way before. Most people think it’s too thin. Too flat, asymmetrical, not enough personality. It’s nothing like, say, Eames’ mouth.

For example.

“How would you know?” he rattles back, and, nope, _no,_ but— “You’ve never kissed it.”

Eames’ pupils flush just a little bit wider. His nostrils flare. Arthur can hear his own fucking _breath._

“To paraphrase an exceptional specimen of rogue,” Eames murmurs, low as a sucking tide, “you’re overdue, and I most definitely know how.”

Arthur suspects Eames is right about that. Just has this feeling. He only hung out a centimeter away from that mouth for an hour while in a drunken fit ten months ago, breathing Eames’ exhalations and wishing he’d thought to get that beer instead of whatever slop he’d been drinking, and thinking that sexual tension between two aliases who were already supposed to be banging like trashcan lids was highly overrated. The mark would totally have bought into a thorough tonguing right there at the table, and Arthur, Arthur’s a good kisser, too. He thinks now as he thought then (and _hasn’t_ thought about since, okay?): he could give Eames something for the ages.

But Eames’ head is already too big to fit through most doors, and Arthur’s done loitering around this same patch of ground like a kid throwing rocks at his crush’s window.

“Stirring line, Eames. Now if you don’t mind, there’s somewhere else I need to be.” He waves magnanimously toward the door again, but Eames’ eyes catch him, pull the hesitation out without his permission, and Arthur’s condescending bow ends up much less smooth than he’d like.

“Oh, it’s not a line, darling.” There’s something tenuous in Eames tone, but not really fragile. It vibrates, makes Arthur think he’s going to miss something crucial if he doesn’t pay close attention right the hell now. Eames steps closer, just one step, and also all the space that’s left. “And I think I need you to stay here.”

His eyes trace down and up Arthur’s front again, _very_ plain. Very pointed. The weight of it hits Arthur, heavy yet transient, the flare of a familiar flame that’s always quick to smother in the end. Already Arthur can feel the way it will raze, leave him peeled back and seared, and inevitably alone, his lungs sucking after pledges that have vanished like smoke.

Arthur sneers. “Why? So you can live for the moment?” 

The room goes very still.

“And who gave you the idea that a moment is all that’s on offer?” Eames asks it very softly, so the words run together, and the only way Arthur can understand is because he is so very, very close to Eames’ lips.

Eames’ eyes are sharp, his mouth somber. The gravity is quelling. Arthur looks back at him, the answer butting up against his clamped lips, and refuses to speak it.

There’s a shift that changes _everything_ in Eames’ face. Eames wets his lips. “Then I,” he says, even lower than before, almost to himself, “have been a very foolish man, Arthur.”

 _Sweet talker!_ Arthur’s mind pleads. _Heard this before!_ But he hasn’t. Eames never says anything quite the way someone else has already said it, never does anything that can’t be fashioned anew in some way, _never looks at Arthur_ exactly the way Arthur’s always been looked at. Right now, he’s stripping Arthur bare with his eyes, skinning the clothing right off of his shoulders and hips in slow, languorous sweeps. It’s like Eames has been struggling to keep this in check, and now it has poured over its lip into the open. Arthur’s forearms ripple into gooseflesh and he knows Eames sees it.

Eames rocks one more step forward. When he next inhales, his chest brushes Arthur’s.

Arthur thinks he’s ready, but the kiss, when it comes, is not an inferno. It’s barely there, tentative and feather-soft, lips parted to trace his. A breath skates against Arthur’s mouth, and an unsteady huff meets his ears.

Arthur tilts forward, catches Eames’ lower lip between his, bumps their chins. Eames turns his head into it, and they slip into place, and Arthur can’t stop his exhalations, the harried weight of them, but Eames, Eames is breathing hard, too, an uneven rush through his nose. He dips his head to the side, comes up at Arthur’s mouth from beneath, and _then_ it blazes, _then_ Arthur’s tongue is hot against Eames’, and he tosses out all previous notions of what it means to kiss a person.

“This shirt, darling?” Eames manages against Arthur’s mouth. His fingers tug at Arthur’s shirt before splaying, sliding in a hot swipe right up his ribs. “Is the definition of cruel.”

He nudges a knee between Arthur’s, and topples Arthur backwards onto the bed.

**

Eames, by the way? Gets him the hell out of those _jeans._

**

Afterward, Arthur lies on the duvet, shocked and a little bit delighted. His mouth burns and his teeth taste of Eames and he has the imprint of fingers just behind his ears and chafed across his thighs.

But that’s nothing. _Someone_ had the gall to bite Eames on the clavicle.

Arthur turns his head and fits his mouth to the mark again. He closes his teeth gently, then changes his mind and sucks until Eames groans and shivers away, catching Arthur’s hand at the heel. He brushes the bruised spot beneath his throat with his pinky and winces.

“That _hurt.”_ Eames sounds miffed.

Arthur studies his face, then shrugs. “Should’ve thought of that before.”

He leans up and kisses the smile as it breaks wide over Eames’ face. He makes it messy and thorough.

And still, Eames eventually maneuvers the kiss into his favor. 

**  
**  
**

“I have _never,”_ huffs Yusuf, tugging out his line, “seen projections do that.”

“That was like Mardi Gras,” Ariadne says. “On acid.” She looks spooked.

“Considering the subconscious we were in, celebration is better than outright mayhem. And fireworks aren’t all that far from explosives,” Dom says reasonably, then turns the full scale of his stare on Arthur, eyes intent and blue. His mouth squinches up slowly.

Eames snickers. His hand jumps over Arthur’s fingertips between their lounge chairs, dancing across his knuckles. 

“Really, darling?” His voice is as rich as honey. “Capoeira?”

Arthur curses Eames’ genitalia in six languages, including a dead one.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> So, Eames is well-versed and basically quotes just about everyone in some way here. “You’ve got an awfully kissable mouth,” a la F. Scott Fitzgerald… “You should be kissed and often, by someone who knows how,” a la Margaret Mitchell (via Clark Gable). There’s even a flimsy reference to the exquisite _It’s A Wonderful Life_ when Eames asks Arthur where he picked up a certain article of clothing. And last but not least, the title comes from this lovely notion by John Green: “The human tongue is like wasabi: it’s very powerful and should be used sparingly.”
> 
> As for the French. Eames says, “I was in raptures,” to which Arthur answers, “I don’t care.” Of course. Again so much gratitude to thebeantree for this!


End file.
